I'm on a journey with a set destination. Heaven! I want to journey well and bless those traveling alongside me. I don't want to sit - I want to make progress - everyday. But I know, I must feel the brush of His Robes, or I'll never make the climb. This blog will chronicle my journey, but more importantly, it will share my moments of reaching for the Robes of Christ.

Monday, June 2, 2014

she dances...

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a
time to mourn, and a time to dance... Ecclesiastes 3:4

While little Grace was still in her
mother's womb, Jesus moved in beside her, into her mother's soul.
Just as if He wanted to be sure she felt Him near...

Abandoned by her earthly father, her
mother wept over how she would ever be able to feed four little
mouths on her own. Life for a single mother in Africa is like
paddling upriver e-v-e-r-yday. There's the stigma of society that
silently taunts “why” do your children not have a father; there's
the struggle of putting a roof over their heads and food in their
ever aching stomachs. Never-mind that the mother has remained
faithful and had no power to hold the father to the place he should
have stayed. So many things ache here. Mosquitos bring malaria. Bad
water brings typhoid. Even the dirt here holds hidden parasites and
jumping jiggers. But on that dirt dances a little girl who has
mesmerized this writer with her worship.

Grace. She sparkles in a unassuming,
silent way. She looks no different than all the others around her.
Just one in a million of close shaved heads bouncing down a dirt
road. But she is.

Her mother, Eve, shared with me once
that she wondered at why God would choose to place one like Grace
under her care. “What do you mean, Eve?”, I asked. “It's just
that Grace teaches me, but she has no idea all I learn from her.”
And Eve began to share the holy-beauty of this little snaggle-toothed
treasure. She said...

“When Grace talks to God she holds
nothing back. She wails and cries knowing she is in a crowd of many,
but calling out to have God's eyes come upon her alone. She neither
notices nor ponders what another might think, for she is most
interested in calling on the One who made her. She knows He loves
her, hears her, cares for her. She knows. Not because she's been told
it is so, but because she … well, she just knows it to be true.”

Once while at their church and when
Grace was just old enough to go to school, she asked her mother why
her friends were beginning school the next day, but she was not. With
gentle words, Eve explained, “Grace, I have no money to send you to
school. But when God gives us the money, you will go to school.”
Grace smiled. Looking down she walked slowly away, crossing the
church to the far distant corner where no one was sitting. It was not
a Sunday, so few were there. But Eve and her children often went to
the church during the week. They sometimes even slept there. When
life is hard at home, church becomes a refuge. Eve sat with a friend
who had taught her much as a young Christian mother, little Grace
sought the solitude of the corner.

Minutes later, cries were heard coming
from Grace's corner. Eve froze and strained to hear what was wrong.
Faintly at first, but then growing in strength, little Grace's words
came, “God, I cry on you! Really, God, I cry on you for help. You
see, you know, you know what is needed. You know my mother needs
money to send me to school. You know my brother needs to go with me.
You know.. God... GOD... OH GOD... you are the One to take care of
us. My mother will send us to school if you send her the money. But
GOD, you must make a way... I cry on you GOD”

"Nakulilia Mungu wangu" (swahili for "i cry on you my God" )

All this gushed out in high pitched
wails.

Not in subtle, soft, polite, proper
whispers. No this little one was “calling” to God and crying on
Him. Eve began to move to stop Grace from disturbing the others. Eve
was concerned with the volume of her daughter's words, she didn't
want her child distracting others from their grown-up-things. And Eve
was herself, just learning the ways of God. As she began to move
towards Grace, the lady beside stayed her with these words, “Eve,
we grown-ups need to learn from your Grace, she is wiser than we. You
told her what was needed, she is asking. We sit and talk about our
problems, she takes them straight to the One who can do something
about them. She cares little for how she looks, she wants to see God.
Grace is right. She is talking to God --- and now we pray and ask, 'God will you please hear the prayer of little Grace.'”

The wailing prayers rolled into asking
forgiveness for the wrongs of anyone in her house. Asking for God's
help to show them all the way He wants them to live. “Help us Lord,
forgive us, show us, forgive us...” The cries were high pitched and
melodic. The kind that hold air still.

After about 20 minutes of this (yes,
twenty minutes of prayer from a 6 year old wee-warrior), Grace got
up, wiped off her clothes, and walked home.

That night there came a call on Eve's
phone.

A neighbor was asking for Grace and
Peter to be up early in the morning, prepared to go with her to
school. Eve asked, “How can you take them to school, for I have not
school fees to send with them?”

The neighbor said, “Never you mind,
just have them ready early.”

Then early in the morning Eve went to
the church to pray as usual.

As the sun rose Eve returned home and
awakened the children, with instructions to get dressed and be ready
for the neighbor's arrival. She spoke not of what the neighbor had
said, the children were just to go with her. Eve held it in her
heart, had God heard Grace's prayers?

Hours passed until evening, and finally
Grace and Peter returned, with a full year's school fees paid and
sporting new school uniforms. And Grace... well she danced and danced
twirling herself about and moving every inch of her tiny frame,
shouting in a sing-song way, “God you love me, really you love me.
You have taken me to school and given what I asked. Oh God I thank
you, God I thank you, really, GOD it is YOU who has done this. God
surely you love me...”

Eve was learning from her 6 year old
prayer-child. God had moved the heart of a missionary just the day
before when Grace was praying. The missionary gave funds to cover
school fees for 20 children and had asked the neighbor to find the
best candidates. By nightfall, 18 children had been found, but 2 were
still needed. As the neighbor had prayed for two more children, Grace
and Peter had come to her mind. … " Nakulilia Mungu wangu" ---“God, I cry on you! Really,
God, I cry on you for help.”...

oh God...

Tiny Grace has four pairs of shoes in
this world. School shoes, church shoes, rain-boots, and rubber shoes.
She dances in those shoes.

How many pairs of shoes do I have? How
many of them have danced for joy over the goodness of God?

Oh God... i am learning.

This year... the anonymous missionary
was no longer able to pay for the children's school fees. But,
another has done so and has paid all that is needed for the next 2
years. A little girl's prayers in the corner of a church moved
Heaven. And perhaps the Father loves to see His little Grace dance!

One night at dinner time Grace sat back
in her seat and said, “We always have vegetables, but never any
meat. Mom I want cow-meat to eat. Can we have some cow-meat?” Eve
explained that cow-meat was costly and they were blessed to have
vegetables. Grace threw back her tiny head and says, “Lord (in a
perfectly wonderful high-pitched tone), we thank you for the
vegetables, they are good and we are glad for them. But would you
please send us some cow-meat to eat? It would be so good to eat ...”.
Finishing her food she settled in to sleep. Eve smiled.

The next day Eve came to work and no
sooner had she arrived but I called her into the kitchen and said,
“Eve, yesterday I bought two packets of meat at the market. It is
good beef, but I cooked one last night and it is just too tough for
us. Would you be willing to take this one home with you and cook it
long so it will be tender with your vegetables tonight?” Eve looked
at me with a most curious look, but replied with a quiet, “Yes mom,
I will cook it tonight.” I was concerned that my gift of 'tough'
meat might have offended. So I purposed in my heart to be more
careful the next time.

The following day Eve shared with me
how God had worked through Grace's prayers and how I, completely
unaware of Grace's request to God, had handed her a packet of
cow-meat the very next morning. Eve's curious look had only been an
expression of shock at God's quick provision after Grace's prayer
just the night before.

Most beautiful was Eve's telling of how
Grace had danced

and danced

and danced

when Eve had arrived home the evening
before with a packet of cow-meat for their dinner.

Have I held myself too carefully? Do I
worry too much over what “they” might think? Is it the eyes
around me or the eyes above me that matter most?

In my inner most being --- I know GOD
loves for little Grace to dance.

… I close my eyes and worship Abba as
the music plays and praise spills from my lips... I close my eyes and
reach with my hands... I feel His robes brush my fingers...and i'm
twirling at His feet. He's High and Holy and God-of-All --- i'm His
little girl twirling and dancing around his great mighty feet. His
white robes gently whisk round me, no one sees me, no one knows –
One sees me, One knows. I'm His tiny dancing daughter, He's my
Holy-Daddy-God. He covers me and loves me and I dance... and dance...
and dance...

… I close my eyes and worship Abba...
and dance around His robes.

…[Christians] believe that the living, dynamic
activity of love has been going on in God for ever and has created
everything else. And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important
difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in
Christianity God is not a static thing–not
even a person–but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a
kind of drama. Almost,
if you will not think me irreverent, Christianity is to be a kind of
dance…

And now, what does it all matter? It matters
more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or
drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in
each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each
one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that
dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were
made.”

Love this "God drama" playing out before your eyes and the eyes of so many....that is the beauty of Kenya, isn't it? Not in what people have or their homes or lands but the beauty of God in their hearts....even so dramatically in a 6 yr old.....

About Me

Married to Steve, mother to Michael, Maggie, and Peter, daughter of Donald and Kathryn Glover, sister to Kathy Williams and Jeff Glover ----- follower of Jesus Christ, and life-long learner. I was an elementary school teacher for 14 years and then worked serving those preparing to go on missions trips to Africa. I've enjoyed free-lance writing for several years. Now, we serve in Kenya teaching Godly Principles of Marriage as we mentor and encourage couples to bless each other, bless their children and homes, honor God, and multiply goodness around them. What a life we are living... so thankful.